


The Saving

by sparxwrites



Series: Something Left To Save [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Anger, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Growth, Comfort, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Forgiveness, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury Recovery, Learning to receive comfort, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Past Rape/Non-con, Protectiveness, Rape Recovery, Sparring, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, Tenderness, Touch Aversion, Vomiting, kind of, talking about things like adults
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:53:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27347695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: The Mighty Nein tear through Vergesson Sanatorium like wildfire and holy fury, leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. Astrid, Eodwulf, any guards foolish enough to try and stop them… Trent Ikithon isn’t there. No matter. They will find him, when they have Beau and Caleb free and far from this place, and they will do to him too exactly as they did to Astrid and Eodwulf.They arrive too late, though. There is nothing left to save.(or; A story about the aftermath. A story not quite about recovery. A story about how to move on from something unimaginable. )
Series: Something Left To Save [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026676
Comments: 24
Kudos: 112





	The Saving

**Author's Note:**

> This won't make much sense unless you've read "[ _Something Left to Save_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22683712)" first - please heed the tags/warnings on that one, because it's very heavy. If you don't want to read _Something Left to Save_ , but still want to read this fic, there's a summary in the end notes that will give you most of the context needed.

The Mighty Nein tear through Vergesson Sanatorium like wildfire and holy fury, leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. Astrid, Eodwulf, any guards foolish enough to try and stop them… Trent Ikithon isn’t there. No matter. They will find him, when they have Beau and Caleb free and far from this place, and they will do to him too exactly as they did to Astrid and Eodwulf.

They arrive too late, though. There is nothing left to save.

Trent Ikithon is gone. Eodwulf is dead, Astrid is dead, the Mighty Nein is soaked in blood – and Beau is filthy, bloody, emaciated, curled over Caleb’s corpse and touching his hair and begging him to _breathe_.

It’s a blur, from the Empire to Rosohna. Beau barely has the energy to stand upright, let alone walk, and it’s only by the grace of Fjord’s supportive arm that she doesn’t collapse two feet outside the cell. She only has vague impressions of the space between it and the Xorhaus – Essek, his face shocked pale and ashen at the state of them all, at the body in Yasha’s arms; of magic, swallowing her whole; of darkness, and then light, their tree a beacon in the city’s eternal twilight.

Yasha lays Caleb down at its roots, carefully, so carefully, as the clerics start gathering components, start drawing symbols and runes. There’s a panic in their quiet, a frenzied sort of hush that washes over Beau in waves of surreal disruption to her dissociation.

Free. She’s finally free. She’s finally _out_.

And there’s nothing left to save.

The spell starts. The others give their offerings, and she doesn’t know who, or what, because she’s still not quite _there_. She knows when it’s her turn, though. The others go quiet, step back, and the force of their gaze on her after so long alone in the dark makes her want to claw her own skin off. She wants to hide from them. She wants to scream. _Don’t you know what he did_. She wants to sink teeth into her own skin until she bleeds, for what she did to herself.

She doesn’t do any of that. Instead, she stumbles over to her brother’s corpse, to her rapist’s corpse, and drops to her knees. “You promised, asshole,” she whispers, and her throat is raw with disuse, raw with screaming. The hand she presses to his chest is missing three fingernails. One of his ribs shifts beneath her touch, unmoored. “You promised. Something left to save.” Her voice cracks. “What’s the fucking point, if you– Come back. Come back. I didn’t do– _we_ didn’t do all that for nothing, you hear me? _Come back_.”

There’s a hand on her arm, trying to tug her away as the magic rises in the circle around Caleb’s corpse. She’s too tired to move.

She collapses in inches, instead, curling over that shifting, unmoored chest. The magic rises, and rises, and she can pretend the prickling across her face is the itch of the arcane, rather than an endless expanse of unshed tears fighting to be free.

The magic rises, and falls. Caleb’s chest shifts beneath her cheek. The hand has left her arm. Like this, it feels almost like the cell, like the days and nights and whatever-else-they-were spent cold and exhausted and curled together, as though the proximity would absolve them of the horrors they had inflicted on one another. On themselves.

Caleb’s chest shifts beneath her, again, a stuttered contraction. She’s so tired. An inhale. An exhale. She’s _so fucking tired_. The rib beneath her hand slips, slides, and there’s a gasp – wet, pained, scared. Alive. Hurting, but alive.

She passes out.

* * *

It takes Beau three days to find the strength to get out of bed and hobble her way down to the kitchen. No doubt Jester and Caduceus wouldn’t approve, but tough shit, because she’s sick of being in bed. Sick of just having to _lay_ there, getting poked and prodded, tolerating people being sad at her. Tolerating being weak. Being _vulnerable._

So she waits for them to leave her be, and then – after several false starts, after forcing her legs to listen to her, after locking her knees and gritting her teeth and being reduced to carefully bumping down the stairs on her arse – she heads down to the kitchen.

By the time she makes it, her legs are trembling, and she’s lightheaded with exertion. She has to lean against the doorframe to stay upright, fingers curled tight around the wood. She still nearly falls. Her breathing is harsh in her chest.

She still feels better than she has in days, though, in all those hours of lying prone in bed. In all those hours of people fussing over her, and putting their hands on her.

“Beau! You’re up!” calls Veth, from her place on a stool by the stove. She’s stirring a pot of something, and Beau can’t see the contents but she can _smell_ them. Salt and herbs and meat and something warm, starchy – a stew then, probably. A step up from porridge oats and broth, which is all that Caduceus and Jester have allowed her for the past few days. “Clerics finally let you out of bed, huh?”

Beau grunts, because she doesn’t want to answer that, given the answer is technically _no_. And also because she is abruptly, unsettlingly _starving_. The faintest smell of meat, of _real food_ , has her stomach twisting itself into desperate, unexpected knots. She’s not been hungry for– a while. Not since the first week of– since the first week.

She hadn’t known it did that, hunger – just switched off, if you didn’t to feed it. Hadn’t known that it could turn you into a human shell, papered thin over a numb void. She knows now.

“Caleb’s still in bed,” continues Veth, keeping one careful eye on the stew and another on Beauregard. “I don’t know if Jester and Caduceus told you. The resurrection took a lot out of him, and there was a lot to fix even _besides_ the being dead thing, with _both_ of you–”

“I don’t,” says Beau, with an abrupt viciousness that frightens even her, “fucking _care_ about Caleb.” Her legs feel like jelly, her stomach like a black hole, and the grief-horror-misery that has suddenly roared to life inside her threatens to swallow her whole.

She doesn’t want to think about Caleb right now. She’s not sure she ever wants to think about Caleb again. Doesn’t want to think about him, or that room, or the gaunt starvation-hollows of his cheeks lit by the glow of his cuffs– the blood smeared under his nose, the whites of his eyes gone pink-red from pain and psychic strain– the raw mess he’d made of his wrists pressing cuffs against stone, the way he’d tried to hide it from her, as though she wouldn’t fucking notice– the way his fingers had felt, two of them half-broken, nails crusted around the edges with his own blood where they weren’t missing, the final time they had–

The sudden urge to vomit takes her, and if there were anything solid in her stomach, she would have. As it is, her stomach lurches, and her throat works, and her tongue tastes of bile, and… that’s it. That’s all.

She’s so fucking broken that she can’t even puke properly. It’d be funny, if she still remembered how to laugh.

Veth opens her mouth, just a little, and Beau expects a lashing. Expects a defence of Caleb. “Oh,” is all Veth says though, quietly, and Beau– is grateful? Is angry? Feels seen. She remembers, somewhere through the everything, that Veth has also known torture. Wonders if it was a torture like hers; decides she has no room for caring, right now. No room for empathy.

She cannot help wondering, nonetheless.

“Well,” says Veth, and Beau gets the awful feeling she’s confirmed something. That some suspicion of Veth’s has matured into knowledge. She doesn’t _like_ it. She doesn’t want to be known, or to be seen, or– anything. Ever, ever again. “You should sit down, before your legs give out, or Jester will kill you. I mean. Caduceus would bring you back, but it’d be a whole thing. You hungry?”

“ _Starving_.” It comes out more raw and honest than she meant it to. Her stomach pulses in time to her heartbeat.

“Stew’s pretty much done. Bread’ll be about ten minutes.” Veth eyes her for a long moment – and it’s a calculating gaze, not a pitying one. Beau isn’t grateful, but she’s relieved. She doesn’t think she could survive pity, right now. “For fuck’s sake. _Sit_. I’ll get you some stew.”

Beau barely makes it to the table. But she does, just, without her knees giving way or the spinning in her head driving her to the floor. She sits. The smell of stew and bread is stronger, here, closer to the stove. Her stomach is a clenched fist.

She folds her arms, gingerly, on the table, and slumps forward to rest her forehead on them. The dark space they make is somewhere between claustrophobic and comforting. She breathes, and counts her breaths.

Behind her, Veth clatters with bowls and cutlery. She breathes, still, and counts her breaths, still, and tries to remember how to be a person again. For the first time, since the saving, she’s worried that she won’t be able to.

* * *

“Well, seems like you’re all fixed up,” says Caduceus, a week after he and the others freed her from… well. She’s taken to not naming it, even in the privacy of her own head, not even _thinking_ about it. It can’t hurt her if she keeps it at an arm’s length. It can’t hurt her if she refuses to give it the power to. “Or, fixed up as much as magic can manage, anyway – there’s some things that only rest and time can heal.”

“Some things they can’t, too,” mutters Beau, snatching her hand away from his grasp. The pine-needle cleanness of his healing magic fades slowly from her bones. The touch of skin on skin, even soft-furred skin just barely skating her own, still makes her want to claw her way out of her own body.

One of Caduceus’s ears twitches, and the corners of his eye go a little soft, a little sad. That’s the only indication he heard anything, _noticed_ anything, though. Beau’s sure he hadn’t missed her discomfort at his touch, the minute relaxation of her shoulders the second they were separated. She hates him for it, a little. “I’m gonna suggest you take it easy for a bit, still,” he says. His voice is steady, calm, the kind of voice she imagines he used to use with the recently bereaved. She hates him even more, for that. “Get a couple of square meals, a little bit of gentle exercise, before you get back to fighting things.”

Beau shrugs one shoulder, awkwardly. “Yeah, yeah, rest, vegetables, half-hour walks or whatever. I know.” She’s done this recovery shtick before. Admittedly not from– from _this_. From the kinds of things they did to her, in that place she doesn’t think about.

The very _comprehensive_ kinds of things they did to her.

But she’s dealt with a broken wrist before, a fractured foot, a dislocated shoulder. Hell, she’s done coming back from pretty close to _death_ before. After a week of intensive healing, she’s pretty sure she’s fine. Or as close to it she’s ever going to get again.

Caduceus looks at her, for a long moment, looks _into_ her, and Beau is seized with the sudden, wild urge to punch him. She doesn’t, of course – but it’s there, coiled in her stomach like a wild animal. A dark, angry revulsion at the thought of being _seen_.

He looks, mercifully, away from her a moment later. Beau’s not sure what he saw in her, whether he saw that broken, base urge to lash out, but there’s a new tightness in the corners of his mouth. It hits her like a punch to the gut.

“You’re allowed to not be okay, you know,” is all he says, though. No admonishment for her anger, her pathetic urge to violence. “Healing takes time. Especially healing the deep-down bits. That takes the most time of all. Just be gentle with yourself for a bit, you know? Go easy.”

“I’m– sorry,” she grinds out, like it’s glass. Because he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve her ungratefulness when he and the rest of the Nein risked their lives to get her out. When they’ve all bled themselves dry to bring her back and fix her up. They deserve her as she was – not as she is, all jagged edges and anger and flinching. “You’re right. I’ll… try and take it easy. Or something.”

“Oh, _hey_ now,” says Caduceus, gently. She can see his desire to touch her in the line of his shoulders, that urge to extend a hand and offer comfort, but… he doesn’t. Doesn’t even reach out. It means more to her than she can say, more than he could possibly know, that he doesn’t. “Beauregard. _Beau_. You’ve not got anything to be sorry for.”

And Beau – because she can think of nothing else to do – turns, and flees the room.

* * *

Beau wakes in the middle of the night a week later to find her door open, and Caleb in the doorway.

He’s not doing anything. Not speaking, not moving. Just watching her, like he’s been there for a while, like he isn’t expecting her to notice. Like he’s done this before, maybe, just stood there, in her doorway, watching her sleep, watching her whilst she’s vulnerable, defenceless–

Her first reaction is frozen-still terror. Her second reaction is _fury_.

“Get out,” she rasps, and her voice is hoarse. The words feel like sandpaper in her throat. She must have been screaming in her sleep again.

Caleb flinches, rabbit-in-the-headlights. “Beauregard– I was not–” he starts, and his voice sounds as though he hasn’t slept in a week. From the bruises under his eyes, perhaps he hasn’t. “I, I–”

Beau grabs the closest object she can set hands on, the small clay cup on her nightstand, and hurls it at him. It hits the doorframe, a foot from his head, and explodes into jagged reddish shards.

She’s not sure whether she missed accidentally or on purpose.

He barely flinches. His eyes track the passage of the cup with a dead dispassion, watch as it shatters inches from his face, and he barely flinches.

She supposes, after all that was done to them, that a cup to the face is hardly a concern – but still. It makes her _angry_ , to see him feel so little. It makes her angry, that she’s here, full of feelings, full of things she can’t parse out and cannot control, and he is– dead. Dead and empty. Not even a _little_ afraid of her, like she is of him.

It’s not fair, that he should get to be clean and cold and numb, and she should end up full of all these goddamn knives.

“ _Get out_ ,” she snarls at him, and only barely keeps her voice below a shout. If she shouts, the others will come. If she shouts, she’ll have to explain the spilled water, the shattered cup, the way she’s so fucking _angry_ she’s shaking. “Get the _fuck_ out, Widogast.”

Caleb just stares at her. “Beauregard–” he says again, softly, but she doesn’t want to hear it.

She wants to cut his hands off, so he can never touch her again, and cut his cock off, and then carve out her own insides in deep, bloody swathes until she manages to claw free the guilt wound around her intestines. She doesn’t want to see the bags under his eyes, the white knuckles of his hand clenched around the doorframe, the tightness in his shoulders.

It’s easier to be angry when she can forget that he’s hurting, too.

“ _Get out_ ,” she says, for the last time, because if she has to say it again… She’s not sure what will happen, not really. But the others will definitely hear it.

He leaves, then. Turns and runs, and shuts the door behind him, because he’s a coward. Because he doesn’t realise that what she means is _stay and let me scream at you_. That what she means is _be a vessel for my anger_. That what she means is _I can’t stand not having someone to blame_.

She crawls out of bed to pick up the shards of pottery. It’s cold, out from under her blankets, her bare feet colder still from the puddling water on the floor. The sharp edges of the fired clay bite into her callouses, fail to break skin. She thinks of her stomach, her cunt, beneath the layers of clothes she now wears to sleep, soft and vulnerable. Uncalloused.

She puts the shard in the waste bin, and crawls back into bed.

* * *

“We fucked,” blurts Beau, when Yasha’s got her pinned – one forearm braced carefully across her throat and a knee on her belly, holding her to the ground.

It’s a really fucking bad time to say it. Any time would be a bad time to say it, especially given the complete lack of context. But, given it’s taken weeks to convince Yasha that she’s okay to spar with, that she won’t break, that she won’t be somehow vitally damaged by a bit of friendly training… This isn’t helping her case.

Yasha, to her credit, does not immediately assume Beau’s gone insane.

She shifts off Beau, instead, slow and careful, sitting back on her heels in an easy crouch a good few feet away from Beau’s prone form. It gives her the space to lever herself up onto her elbows, and then into a sitting position, hunched over her own knees like she needs to protect her stomach. Yasha stays crouched, ready, watching.

In any other circumstance, Beau would be admiring the lines of Yasha’s thighs, the implied strength and control of the position. Right now, though, she’s busy trying not to be sick.

“Who?” asks Yasha, and the softness in her voice belies the steel beneath it. There’s no judgement in her gaze, but Beau feels the weight of it nonetheless. It crushes her, despite Yasha’s attempts to be gentle.

“Caleb,” manages Beau, through the noose suddenly pulled taut around her throat. “Me and Caleb. At the– the– place.”

Saying it out loud should help. She knows that much. That’s how these things are supposed to work, you talk about it, and there’s healing, and a celestial choir and warm light or some shit. That doesn’t happen, though. Instead, it’s just her, sat on the floor feeling flushed, sick, the poisonous shit that had been fermenting deep inside of her suddenly dripping from her hands.

Yasha inhales sharply, exhales slowly. “I’ll kill him,” she says, quiet and steady. There’s no change in her expression, no sudden pity or revulsion, just the easy promise of swift and unquestioning retribution.

It eases the urge to vomit that’s been clawing up Beau’s throat, a little.

“It– no, it wasn’t. Like that,” says Beau, sniffing, swallowing to try and ease the fist in her throat. She swipes a forearm across her face, though there’s no tears on her cheeks. “It, there was this, this fucking curse thing that– We were gonna die. I nearly died. We both did.” Her breath shudders out of her, fingers twisting, clawing at nothing. “I. I _started it_.”

Yasha holds her hair back while she retches. She’s grateful for it and humiliated in equal measure, and by the time she’s done spitting bile into the dirt she’s shaking. “I _started_ it, Yasha.”

“I… we killed Eodwulf,” says Yasha, eventually. Her voice is usually hard to read, but right now it’s heavy with grief, thick enough even Beau can hear it. She smooths Beau’s hair back against her head, absently, and when she pulls her hand away, Beau finds with a shock that she almost misses it. “And Astrid. I’m… I’m sorry we took that from you. I don’t know if it would have helped, but…”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Beau wipes her mouth with a shaking hand. She’d known they were dead, but hearing it helps. A little. Maybe. She doesn’t know if she’d have wanted to kill them herself; doesn’t know if she could have managed that without losing herself entirely. Doesn’t know whether it would have changed anything. She feels selfish, mostly, for caring how it happened at all. She should just be grateful they’re dead. “I don’t– I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.”

* * *

“Yasha’s on the warpath,” says Fjord, mildly, as he sits down next to Beau on the soft moss of the Xorhaus roof. “Has been all week.”

Beau jumps. Her reflexes are as good as ever – she’s got her hands up in front of her in a second, body weight shifted so she could wrestle Fjord to the floor even from sitting position – but her observational skills are clearly getting rusty. Stupid. _Stupid_. That’s going to get her killed. Assuming, that is, the Nein ever let her out on adventuring excursions again, given she’s still under mind-numbingly boring bedrest orders.

“Huh,” she says, and does her best to radiate _leave me alone_ vibes. “Weird.”

“Started after that sparring session with you,” says Fjord, still so _mild_ , like he’s commenting on the weather. Beau grunts at him, and he holds up his hands as though she’d motioned with a knife. “I’m not– prying.” Funny thing to say, when he clearly is. “I’m just… we’re all here for you, Beau, you know that, right? We’re all trying to– we all _want_ to help.”

The moss is fuzzy and half-damp beneath her hands, when she curls her fingers into it. It’s not yet midday, not quite enough heat filtered through Rosohna’s sun-shield to evaporate the dew. She wouldn’t rip it up – wouldn’t risk Caduceus’s wrath or, worse still, his _disappointment_ , like that – but her fingers claw as though to pull nonetheless.

Fjord watches her.

She can feel his gaze on the side of her face, and it’s an effort not to watch him out the corner of her eye. She’s always been a little hypervigilant, but the sanatorium has turned her into something– feral. Prey-animal, in her need to watch, to monitor, to _see_. She doesn’t like it. She’s trying to put a stop to it, like it’s a bad habit, rather than adrenaline-fuelled survival instinct. It makes her chest hurt.

“Caleb still avoiding you, then?” continues Fjord, after an uncomfortable amount of time has passed. It’s a blatant non-sequitur, makes Beau grind her teeth and want to snap at him. “Or, rather, I mean– he’s avoiding all of us, really, I suppose. Not leaving his room all that much, not joining us for dinner, not–”

“Seems like that’s his problem,” she manages, stiffly, because if she doesn’t say that she’s going to say something even worse. “Not mine. Look. D’you, like, _want_ something, Fjord, or–?”

“No, just… trying to make conversation,” he says, shrugging one awkward shoulder. “Figured it was my turn, you know.”

Beau grunts, again, because she doesn’t know what the fuck to say to that. At least he’s being honest, she supposes, that they’re taking it in turns to check up on her. She’s not sure how she feels about that. Beau from before, she supposes, would be pissed about it, but secretly a little flattered. She’s not sure she’s got the energy for pissed. She’s not sure she remembers how to be flattered.

The urge to rip up the moss builds, and the only thing holding her back is the knowledge of how _disappointed_ Caduceus would be in her.

“…Can I. D’you mind if I give you a hug?” Fjord says, quietly, after the silence stretches out into something aching. “No pressure. Just… I’d like to, if you don’t mind.”

 _No_ , Beau thinks. _No, no, absolutely fuck no._

“Sure,” she say, instead. The back of her throat tastes sour. She wonders why that’s all her friends want to fucking do – _touch_ her, get sad at her, as though they were the ones hurt. As though they were the ones that lived through it, have to live _with_ it. As though they have any right to grieve. “Whatever.”

His touch doesn’t burn. It had, for a while. They all had, for the days and weeks directly after the sanatorium. But the hug is… okay. It’s tolerable. It makes Beau want to cry, a little bit – the hug, the not the absence of burning – but it’s fine _._ It’s _fine_. She can deal.

She wonders, after Fjord releases her and leaves her to her meditation, if this is what healing feels like.

She decides that, regardless, she fucking hates it.

* * *

Jester looks up from her book when Beau enters the Xorhaus lounge. Beau feels her eyes, like claws on the back of her neck, as she bends to stoke the fire. It’s only mid-afternoon, but the winter cold has set in, biting and chill throughout the house. The fire runs all day, now.

Not that she minds. After the sanatorium she had, for some reason, developed a visceral dislike of the feel of cold stone. Especially on bare skin. The fire… helps.

She does mind, though the feel of being watched. She’s getting used to it, gradually. Mostly by force, since everyone keeps fucking staring at her like she’s a firework primed to go off. Doesn’t mean she has to _like_ it.

“What do you want?” she asks Jester, without turning round, and tries to make it not sound like an accusation. She’s _trying_. Gods only knows she’s trying.

“Oh,” says Jester, softly, closing her book with a gentle _thump_. The note of apology in her tone makes Beau wince. Yet another fuck-up, to add to her growing list over the past month or so. “Oh, no, I just. Hmm. I was… wondering if I could, maybe… give you a hug?”

“Why does everybody want to _fucking_ hug me,” says Beau, and that doesn’t even come out as an accusation. It just sounds exhausted.

She’s just _tired_. So goddamn tired. She’s still not sleeping right, and everyone keeps watching her, keeps wanting to _touch_ her now she’s not flinching from their every move. It grates, even though she knows that _this_? It’s all a part of learning to be a person again, learning to be human again. Doesn’t mean she has to like it.

She’s supposed to be getting _better_. She hadn’t realised that involved quite so many screaming nightmares.

Jester pauses, and when Beau turns to face her, she’s worrying at her lower lip with her teeth. “Because you seem sad,” she says, eventually – and at least she doesn’t mince her words. After weeks and weeks of tiptoeing, the honesty is refreshing, even as it starts an ache somewhere beneath Beau’s ribs. “And because–”

She pauses, and takes a deep breath, and the words fall out of her like a waterfall. “Because, and it’s stupid, I know, because you had it like, _so much worse_ , I _know_ , but– you were still missing, for days, for _weeks_ , and we didn’t know where you were– and then we did, and I was so _scared_ because, like, that’s the place where they hurt Caleb, you know, and– I didn’t even know if you were going to be alive, when we got you, or if Caleb was going to be alive, and then. Then he _wasn’t_ , and you were so hurt, and now you’re all sad, and I can’t–”

Jester sniffs, and drags in another deep, unsteady breath, and hurtles on regardless. She is, Beau realises, crying. With a rising sense of horror, she realises _she_ may be crying too. “We couldn’t rescue you in time, and I couldn’t _fix_ things, not properly, and… and…”

“Oh,” says Beau, because what the fuck else is there to say. And then, because she feels like shit, and also like an idiot, she says, “…Sorry.”

“No, no! It’s not your fault, oh gosh, I didn’t mean to…” says Jester, wiping at her cheeks with her palms and trying for a smile. It’s wobbly, and a little wet, and the ache beneath Beau’s ribs grows. “I just– I just meant that, you know. That’s why we all want to hug you. Because we missed you, and we were scared for you, and we’re– we’re sorry. For being too late. And for not being able to fix things.”

“Yeah, that– okay. …Okay,” says Beau, slowly. Because it makes sense– or, more sense than the story she’d spun herself, that they were just busy being sad _at_ her, or sorry _for_ her. She’d forgotten that they’d had their own weeks of hell, too. “That… makes sense. I guess.”

She gets to her feet, then, and walks over to the couch. Stands there, for a long second, staring down at Jester. Sits, very gingerly, down next to her.

“Oh, you don’t have to hug me if you don’t want to, or just because I’m, you know, being silly or something,” says Jester. Her cheeks are mostly dry, now, but her eyes are still over-shiny, and her lips are still wobbling a little.

Beau, very slowly, leans sideways until her head is resting on Jester’s shoulder.

They sit like that for– an amount of time. Beau’s not sure how long. She’s not counting seconds, for once. They sit together, still and in silence, and at some point one of Jester’s hands finds Beau’s hair and begins stroking it, gently.

The calluses on her fingertips catch on the overgrown fuzz of Beau’s undercut. She’s not cut her hair since– since. She should probably do that, some time, but she’s just so goddamn _tired_.

“You don’t have to apologise, y’know,” she says, eventually, because she doesn’t want that. Doesn’t want Jester holding that in her chest, doesn’t want Jester in _any way_ responsible for what was done to her. “It’s not– you weren’t– you didn’t do that. What they did to me. That’s on _them_. _Only_ on them.” _And on Caleb_ , says a nasty voice in the back of her head, a voice she likes less with every passing day. “And you– you weren’t too late. You still saved us. All of you did.”

“That’s very nice of you to say, Beau,” says Jester, in a tone that sounds like gratitude but not agreement.

Beau doesn’t have it in her to argue further. Silence falls again, and the fire burns down slowly, slowly. They sit together on the couch, Jester’s hand on her hair. After a while, the heat of someone else’s body against her stops feeling like a warning sign, mostly. The sliver of Jester’s bare shoulder touching her cheek no longer feels like an itch she yearns to scratch.

A log in the fire crumbles, spitting bright sparks up against the scorch-dark stone of the fireplace. Embers glow, dull red and gold, through the cracks in the charcoal it leaves behind.

“I think,” says Beau, after last of the sparks fade, after the embers keep burning low and slow and steady, “that I should go talk to Caleb.”

Jester hums. “Only if you want to,” she says, and her hands are so soft in Beau’s hair. So gentle. Caleb’s were, too – even towards the end, even when he was caked in his own blood and talking to thin air. Even with his fingers broken, and him barely able to sit up without her support, he was so damn _careful_ with her. “You don’t have to, you know. I think it would be _good_ , because he seems pretty sad and stuff too, but… I don’t want you sad as well. Or more sad, or– Because then we have, you know, two really sad people and stuff, and that’s no good at all.”

Beau thinks about that for a minute, or two. “I think,” she tries, for the second time, “that I’m _gonna_ go talk to Caleb. Yeah. I’m gonna go talk to Caleb.”

“Okay,” says Jester, evenly, and doesn’t make any move to stop stroking her hair.

“…In a minute,” Beau clarifies, letting her eyes slip closed. “Or like, a bit. Tomorrow maybe. Whatever.” It’s warm, curled into Jester’s side, and comfy, and she’s tired. Call it a hunch, but she doesn’t think the nightmares that have taken to haunting her sleep are going to come calling whilst she’s here. “I’m gonna nap.”

“Okay,” says Jester, more warmly this time. She wiggles a bit on the couch, settling herself more comfortably, and reaches for her abandoned book. “Good. That’s… that sounds good. You can nap here for as _long_ as you want.”

* * *

Two months after Vergessen Sanatorium, Beau stands outside Caleb’s door, raises a hand, and knocks.

“Hey,” she says, before Caleb’s even gotten the door fully open – because if she doesn’t get this out _now_ , she’s going to lose her nerve. Or maybe her mind. Or both. “We need to talk.”

Caleb looks… she can’t honestly say _awful_ , because she still remembers him half-starved and shit-smeared back when they first met, and she still remembers him in the– anyway. She can’t say he looks awful. But he looks tired, and unwashed, and still too damn thin. The bags under his eyes are half-masked by the low light inside the room, but she’s pretty sure they’re the black end of purple.

“Beauregard,” he says, cautiously. She half-expects it to be a rasp, but it’s not. Just low and steady as ever, with the life leeched most of the way out of it, filing the edges off of his usually prominent accent. “I… you… ah, _ja_. Yes. If that is what you want.”

“I’m not going to force you if you don’t fucking want to,” she snaps at him, and then flinches back from him when he flinches back from her. Echoes of similar words, from a different time, fill the space between them. It’s a little pathetic, she thinks. Two months, and they’re still both feral, beaten things, barely human. “I mean– shit. Look. Can I come in? Yes-no question.”

“… _Ja_. Come in,” says Caleb, after a full thirty seconds of silence, and steps back. Draws the door open a little wider.

It’s dim in the room, the curtains drawn tight enough no light from the tree above them seeps in. There’s a candle on the desk, burned down to near a nub, and the rest of it is occupied by paper in scraps and balls and torn chunks, covered in frenzied scribbles. The bulk of the room is thrown into looming shadow, the corners turned to black holes and the bookshelves made ominous in the flickering light.

Caleb lets the door swing shut behind them, and suddenly the light of the hallway is gone, and the room is _dark_. As dark as– as–

 _Not quite_ , Beau tells herself, with a deep breath, _as dark as the cell had been. Not quite._

“I am sorry,” says Caleb, softly, as he settles himself on his own unmade bed, the blankets wrinkled and stained with patches of what she has to assume is sweat, “for the… mess.” The floor is covered with more papers, crumpled and written-upon, and with with clothes, and a handful of empty plates. And a single book, thrown at the wall in a display of disrespect Beau hadn’t thought Caleb was capable of offering to books.

His eyes are fixed on the desk chair, opposite his bed. Beau tracks the line of his gaze, and stares at the chair, too, for a long second. Looks around the room again.

When she goes to sit next to him on the bed, instead, he freezes. She waits for him to flinch, to lash out, to try and shuffle away – but he doesn’t. Just sits there, so still she’d half-think he were petrified, if it weren’t for the fine stress-tremors shaking his shoulders.

She sits next to him, on an unmade bed that smells of sweat and fear and misery, and tries not to shake herself.

“…Why were you watching me?” she asks, eventually, and that’s– not what she had meant to say. Not what she’d meant to lead with. This was supposed to be _conciliatory_ , damn it, and here she is, making accusations once again. She’s trying. She’s _trying_. “That– that night. When I…”

She trails off. It’s not shame, exactly, that holds her tongue – or, rather, not shame entirely. The whole memory feels like a wound, not yet healed, too raw to touch. She remembers the shards of fired clay against her palm, remembers the way the urge to turn them on her own soft skin had _burned_ , and swallows hard.

Next to her, Caleb crumples.

It happens slowly, in inches. He hunches, and then curls into himself, arms around his stomach and body swaying forward as though to hide himself. Protect himself. He isn’t crying, she doesn’t think, but his shoulders shake nonetheless. When he drags in a breath, desperate, like he’s drowning, it sounds like a sob.

“I am. _Sorry_ ,” he says, and it sounds like the confession of a dying man. His voice is raw. His face – even when he forcibly rights himself once more, leans back against the wall to try and still his trembling – is hidden by the lank hair that has escaped his ponytail. Beau wishes it wasn’t, so she could fucking _see_ him. Could know what he was thinking. “I am– you. You did not deserve that. I should have… have not…”

“I’m not–” says Beau, and then stops, grinding her teeth, because that’s a _lie_. “I– I was angry. At the time. I’m… look, I don’t know what, any more, I just… I just want to know fucking _why_ , okay. I just want an _answer_.”

When he doesn’t reply, she breathes in. Breaths out. Leans ever so slightly sideways, and then a little more, a little _more_ , until her head is resting on his trembling shoulder. It’s a small movement, such a small movement, but the gesture of it seems big enough to fill the room. It feels like a benediction, from her to him. A laying on of hands.

The trembling doesn’t stop. But it eases, just a little.

“I kept–” says Caleb eventually, and pauses. Swallows. “I keep dreaming about you. You know, that first time, when we tried not to– when you collapsed. I thought you were dead, then. I thought I had killed you. And I keep– when I dream, that is what happened. You are dead, on the stone floor, and I am…”

Words seem to fail him. His hands are shaking. His forearms, Beau notices, are wrapped in bandages again, a habit he’d managed to kick before. The bandages look fresh, in a way that worries her, even through the overwhelming hammering of her heart in her throat.

Something for her to ask the clerics about, she thinks, to make sure they’re keeping an eye on. It’s the first gentle thought she’s had about him in months, and it shocks her like a punch to the spine.

“You.” She pauses, swallows. Breathes in, and out. Caleb’s coat smells of cat against her cheek, and of ink and dirt. “You were the one that died though. Not me.” _It was me that had to watch you die_ , she thinks, but doesn’t say. _Slowly. So slowly._

Caleb exhales, long and unsteady. “ _Ja_ ,” he says, softly. “ _Ja_ , you did. Beauregard, I– I am–” He exhales once more, short and sharp. It takes a spot of damp, spreading dark into the fabric of his coat, for her to realise that he’s _crying_. “I am so sorry. I am so, _so_ sorry.”

“…It was fucked up,” she says, eventually, when she can trust her voice not to outright break. It still shakes. “What happened. What we– what they made us do. It was fucked up.”

“You are like a sister to me.” Caleb’s voice is barely audible, strangled and faint. There are more tear-marks on his coat, now, and one hand is half-raised towards her head, hovering in the air. The memory of him stroking her hair, in the horror of that lightless cell, is abruptly so strong it drives the air from her lungs. “You are– _meine kleine Schwester_ , my sister. I would _never_ – I am, I am so sorry. That they hurt you, that _I_ … that I hurt you.”

“Not your fault,” says Beau, roughly, because if she’s gentle now then she’s going to shatter apart. “It– we had to. And I… I fucking started it, okay, so that’s– that’s on me, at least, _that fucking bit of it_ is. Is on me. And then the rest of it is on them, for being, I dunno, weird, fucked-up wizard perverts. Or whatever.”

“You were _dying_.” The word seems to claw its way out of him, raw and bloody. His hand stops hovering by her head, wrenched ruthlessly back into his lap. “Beauregard, you were dying, _none_ of this is on you. And it– it is my fault, because it is _my past_ , because I dragged you into this–”

“Oh, fuck off,” says Beau, and to her surprise, she– snorts. It’s the closest she’s come to a laugh since she was first thrown into that damned cell. “I knew about all your shit way before this, and I still stuck around. It’s like, at _least_ fifty percent on me for not running when I had the chance.”

She hesitates. Bites her lip so hard she tastes copper. And then she reaches out, slowly, and clasps his half-raised, trembling hand in hers.

The shaking finally stops.

They sit in silence for a while. A long while. Beau isn’t sure quite how long it is, too wrung-out to keep track of her own breath or heartbeat as markers, but it’s long enough that Caleb’s tears stop. Long enough she starts getting a crick in her neck. It’s the longest, probably, that she’s touched someone since getting out of the sanatorium.

“I’ve been angry at you,” she says, sitting up slowly. Her free hand rubs at her neck, massages the half-cramp out of the space between jaw and shoulder, but she keeps her other hand clasped with Caleb’s. “For like. A few months, I guess. Really angry.”

“That is fair,” says Caleb, and his lips twist, press thinly together in unsteady misery.

“No. Stop with the fucking self-flagellating bullshit, and _listen_.” Beau squeezes his hand hard enough that her knuckles hurt, and stares at the wall across from his bed, the flat expanse of plaster and paint. “I’ve been angry _at_ you. Not– not with you, just… Fuck. _Fuck_.” She grinds the heel of her free hand into one eye socket, breath hissing out through her teeth. “Why is this so– so _fucking_ difficult–”

Caleb grips her hand a little tighter, and says nothing. He just breaths, steady, perhaps not as slow as he should be but _steady_.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” she blurts out, and for a second she fears that just putting words to it will tear her apart. “Look, I’m fucking _sorry_ , okay, too, because– because I started it, and because– it wasn’t just me that got hurt, it was– you– and, and–”

“Beaureagrd,” says Caleb, his voice soft and very, very serious. “You have nothing to apologise for. _Nothing_.”

“Then neither do you!” she snarls, and– freezes. Bites her lip hard enough to flood her mouth with blood. _He’s got everything to apologise for_ , says that nasty little voice in her head– but she hates that voice, she _hates it_ , and she never wants to fucking hear it again. “I– fuck. _Fuck_.”

She’s not sure what it means yet, to forgive him. Especially not like this, unplanned, sitting on his unmade bed, the tears she doesn’t remember shedding still drying on her cheeks. She’s not sure what it means for either of them. From the way his shoulders tense, the way his hand tightens around hers, she doesn’t think he knows either.

“That is… very kind of you, Beauregard,” murmurs Caleb, and Beau thinks of Jester – of her tears, of the sadness, of the guilt. Of the gratefulness, but not the agreement.

The space under her ribs aches, a steady pulse in time to the ragged beat of her heart. She’s trying. Gods only knows, she’s fucking _trying_ , with everything she has.

“…Come and have dinner, Caleb,” she says, eventually, exhaustedly, because – the rest of it? That’s too big for her, right now. She can’t touch it. Can’t even look at it, not directly. Just out the corner of her eye. But she can handle dinner, definitely; and she can handle Caleb at dinner, probably. Gods only knows he looks like he needs a solid meal. “Fjord was moping about you avoiding him, like, weeks ago. Or, everyone is, probably. They’re all moping. About you avoiding all of them. Probably.”

Caleb winces, a little. “Ah,” he says, shrugging one shoulder. He makes no move to pull his hand away from hers. “I am…. not hungry.”

“Veth especially,” says Beau, pulling out the big guns, though she has no idea if it’s true or not.

Caleb snorts, quietly, and then looks surprised at himself for having done so. “Veth has never _moped_ in her life,” says, but there’s… it’s not a smile, exactly, but it’s _something_ , caught right at the corner of his mouth. Something that pulls his lip up, just a fraction.

“You calling me a liar?” asks Beau, and nudges him in the ribs with her elbow, and– it takes her a moment to realise that she’s _teasing_ him.

“No!” says Caleb, and for a moment he sounds stricken. Looks stricken. “No, I am– I would not–” He pauses, swallows, and the tension leaks out of his shoulders. “You are…” He trails off. “I would not call you a liar, Beauregard. Never.”

Beau swallows, hard. There’s a world where she knows what to say to that, how to deal with that declaration of trust, but it’s not this one. Not now. Not yet.

“…Look,” she says, instead. “Look. You were the one that fucking said it, in the– in the. In that cell. _Something left to save_.” She squeezes his hand, once, and does not think about the sense-memory of those fingers stroking gently over her hair. “…You coming to dinner, or what?”

“Something left to save,” echoes Caleb quietly, almost thoughtfully, his eyes on the guttering candle on his desk.

His hand tightens around hers, briefly – but he stands with her, crosses the room with her. Follows her out into the light of the corridor, blinking briefly in the brightness. “ _Ja_ ,” he murmurs, an answer minutes late to a question about more than just a meal. He inhales, exhales, and does not let go of her hand. She does not let go of his. “… _Ja_. Okay. Dinner. Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Summary of _Something Left to Save_ : Caleb and Beau were captured by Ikithon et al. and forced, via a combination of _Geas_ and sleep deprivation, to have mutually-unwanted sex with one another in order to stay alive. This fic is about what happens after that, and how they both (but Beau specifically) process and deal with what happened there. There's no explicit depictions of either the sex/rape or the torture in this fic, but both are referenced and very present as themes throughout the whole fic, so please do take care.
> 
> Written to yet another weird sad cover of "[Smells Like Teen Spirit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BY21T52oFw)", this time by Sofia Karlberg (which doesn't seem to have a full version online, unfortunately), "[Apricots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Govg_XmORLE)" by Bicep, and "[Metal and Dust](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as5FZJI6xJU)" by London Grammar.
> 
> Come find me @sparxwrites on tumblr or @sparxwriting on twitter, if you want. My content is usually _slightly_ less horrific than this, I promise.


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